Health

Michigan's governor will announce on Thursday that the state's factories can reopen next week, removing one of the last major obstacles to North American automakers getting thousands of workers back to plants closed by the coronavirus pandemic, two people familiar with the plans said.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have tested negative for the novel coronavirus after a member of the U.S. military who works at the White House was found to have been infected, a White House spokesman said on Thursday.

The average number of daily hospital admissions in Ireland related to COVID-19 has halved in the past week as the country makes "considerable progress" on suppressing the disease, the head of government's infection modelling team said on Thursday.

The number of people who have died from a coronavirus infection in France was up 178 or 0.7% to 25,987 on Thursday, the lowest rate of increase in four days.

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said on Tuesday they have begun delivering doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines for initial human testing in the United States.

The number of people who have died from COVID-19 in Turkey has risen by 57 in the last 24 hours to 3,641, Health Ministry data showed on Thursday.

Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 274 on Thursday, against 369 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new infections declined marginally to 1,401 from 1,444 on Wednesday.

The White House shelved a step-by-step guide prepared by U.S. health officials to help states safely reopen mass transit, restaurants, daycare centers and other public places closed by the coronavirus pandemic, an administration official said on Thursday.

Britain's COVID-19 death toll has risen by 539 to 30,615, according to figures announced on Thursday by foreign minister Dominic Raab.

GlaxoSmithKline will start trials of an experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug on patients suffering from pneumonia related to COVID-19 at the end of the month.

Medical technology company Becton Dickinson and Co said on Thursday it was preparing to ramp up manufacturing operations to handle demand for COVID-19 testing kits in the event of a second wave of infections in the fall.

Calls to domestic violence hotlines in Europe are up by as much as three-fifths as alcohol and drug abuse combine with close confinement in coronavirus lockdowns to fuel abuse of the most vulnerable, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Moderna Inc said on Thursday it expects mid-stage trials for its COVID-19 vaccine to begin shortly while late-stage trials are expected to begin early summer, as the drug developer accelerates its efforts to combat the pandemic.

U.S. scientists are working to understand a rare, life-threatening inflammatory syndrome in children associated with exposure to the new coronavirus by quickly assembling clinical trials and patient registries.

Black people and men of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin are nearly twice as likely to die from the COVID-19 disease than whites, even when adjusting data for deprivation, a new British report said on Thursday.

People under 35 have been made sadder and lonelier than older adults as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, a European survey found, concluding that the strain of being separated from friends and family was taking a tougher toll on the young.

The first immigrant in U.S. detention has died of the novel coronavirus, local health authorities in the state of California said on Thursday, as infections steadily climbed among the country's around 30,000 immigrant detainees.

Japan on Thursday approved Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19, making it the country's first officially authorized drug to tackle the coronavirus disease.

GlaxoSmithKline has started a trial to test an experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug on patients suffering from COVID-19 related pneumonia, after screening its drugs for potential in the fight against the coronavirus.

The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday rejected an assertion by Tanzania's president that coronavirus tests it supplied are faulty.